


There is Nothing Left Inside (But I Am Wide Awake)

by I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own



Series: Malec One Shots [29]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Magnus Bane Needs A Hug, Post Break Up, References to Depression, Soul Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of, soul marks, the ending is kind of open ended so...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 14:43:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21393886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own/pseuds/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own
Summary: In a world where Soulmarks adorn a person's body and tell both sides of the pair about each other, Magnus' soulmark has had centuries to grow, and his soul has had just as long to grow weary.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane/Other(s)
Series: Malec One Shots [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1027613
Kudos: 64





	There is Nothing Left Inside (But I Am Wide Awake)

**Author's Note:**

> Struggling to find the motivation to sit and write things, rather than sit and daydream them. Haha. I am, kind of, still building this idea in my head?? So...
> 
> This is AU from the break up, since Asmodeus hasn't sought Magnus out yet. 
> 
> Scroll over the non-english words for translation (if not on mobile), and also over the flower names for their meaning. If on mobile, there is a list at the bottom.
> 
> Title from Hopeless by Breaking Benjamin

Soulmarks have existed for almost as long as souls have. Adam and Eve were soulmates, Lilith and Adam… were not. His father had told him that Adam and Eve’s soulmark was a beautiful thing to behold, and coming from his father, who was once the angel of love and pleasure, that’s saying something.

His own soulmark has changed more times than he can count. But the thing he’s discovered about his mark, is that once his soulmate dies, their mark is only visible to him, even though everyone still sees his contributions, and when his soulmate is reincarnated, a new mark begins to form.

None of his soulmates remember their past lives.

* * *

Alyssia is the first. They meet in the little Soul Room when he is nine and all alone in the world. She is his elder by three years and she takes him under her wing, even though they live in completely different parts of the world and for the first few months can barely converse, seeing as they speak different languages.

Alyssia is mundane, but she isn’t scared when she learns that he isn’t. She just hums at him and waves for him to carry on trying to control his magic in this little Nothing-Space that is their soul bond.

* * *

Soulmarks traditionally start with a set of symbols that represent the two souls. Magnus’ symbol is a cat’s eye, Alyssia’s is a Calla Lily. Soulmarks then spread out from the symbols, words spinning and twinning together in languages special to the two souls, to explain about them and their past.

The first word that forms in the weeks after they meet in the little room for the first time is Ahli Sihir written in Indonesian and Magnus spends days trailing his fingers over the mark on his arm. Alyssia admits later, when they can understand each other, that she can’t read the Indonesian words in their mark, Magnus admits he can’t read the scrawling German that is her contribution. So Alyssia tells him that the word for her that forms after the flower, is Lady, because her father is noble born.

* * *

The marking on his arm grows throughout their shared lives. Once Magnus meets his father, the words on his arms begin to form in demonic tongues as well as Indonesian. The words that represent Alyssia begin to form in a few other languages, that she tells him are Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Most of the words they tell each other, but some they hold back, like the word scrawled in the palm of his hand in his mother’s tongue.

_ Iblis. _

* * *

Magnus is thirty when he feels a burning in his chest one rainy day. He clutches at his chest and watches in horror as the mark on his arm fades from golden to an off white, the kind of white scars go when they’re old. When the pain stops, he closes his eyes, sends himself to sleep and wills himself to appear in the meeting room, but he doesn’t. He never goes to that little room again. Never sees Alyssia again, never even knows where she is buried, never got to ever see her in person.

Between one day at the next, she is simply gone.

He moves himself forward and tries desperately to ignore it when ‘alone’ scrawls onto his mark in Enochian.

* * *

Alyssia is the first, but she is not the last. Throughout the long years of his life, new Soul Rooms spring up, and their other resident is always someone that takes his breath away, sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a bad one. But Alyssia is… special. Special, because you _always _remember your first.

He remembers Alyssia, he remembers all of his lost soul mates, but Alyssia is special. She was the first and the only female he had in his life after his mother passed. Even if he had forgotten the others, their absence left marks upon him, even when their soulmark faded. He commits every single mark to memory, so when they fade to little more than white marks on his skin, he can remember the way they shone so vibrantly upon his skin when the other person was alive.

He forces himself to learn every single language that ever scrawls over his skin.

* * *

He’s always wondered how his soulmates feel, when their mark appears on their ninth birthday and it’s already as long as the arm of an average adult, without any contributions from them except their symbol. He wonders if any of them have figured out what it means. He’s learned over the years not to allow himself to grow too attached, and for the most part, he’s warded himself against being pulled to the meeting room for at least the last hundred years, so he never meets the owner of the Crowned Star mark.

* * *

Then, one morning, hundreds of years after Alyssia has long become nothing more than bones and dust, he wakes up to find a bow and arrow scrawled directly over his heart. He snorts at the implications of that and rolls his eyes. Eventually, he will run out of room for more soulmarks, since he'll be covered in their fading scars.

He doesn’t go to the room.

* * *

When he meets the owner of the bow and arrow, his whole world stops. It is not the first time he has meet the owner of the complimentary soulmark in person, but it is the first time he hasn’t known them beforehand, and it is the first time he wants to crawl into their arms at first sight. He feels the tug in his chest, in his soul, and he forces himself to breathe. The other marks on their body proclaim his other half to be mortal, and a Shadowhunter at that.

This will not last, and worse, he’s not certain if he will come out of it alive, either.

* * *

He’s not at all confused as to why ‘soul weary’ had scrawled itself into his mark in the 18th century. Now, he probably should be ready to add ‘heartbroken’, though there are countless times in his life he had thought that word would appear, only for it to remain suspiciously absent.

The word that eventually does appear is, of course, so much worse.

* * *

Standing in Maryse’s shop, his world crashing in around him, he’s not surprised when his arm burns. He’s not surprised at the words that scrawl there, either. Just accepting and broken.

_ Bedraget. _In the danish he had learned for Alyssia.

There is also the word בּוֹגֵד scrawled in Hebrew, that Magnus knows isn’t for him

* * *

There is a word that has appeared upon his body in one form or another since he was seventy-three and not coping at all well with the passage of time.

The latest incarnation forms in Alyssia’s German and it catches his breath.

_ Lebensmüde._

He thinks of Alyssia, all those years ago. He wonders if she would be happy to see him now. He wonders if any of Alec’s past selves would be happy to see him now. Of course, Alexander doesn’t remember any of those lives, so Magnus wonders if any of them would be happy with him right now, either.

He’s been around for longer than any sane person has any right to. Maybe, well, maybe it is time for him to move on. Maybe it is time for his soul to have a new life, one that it won’t remember. One where it won’t have to carry ‘soul weary’ or ‘betrayed’ on until his end. Maybe, it’s time to give his soul a new beginning.

He looks at the part of his mark that has faded, where once it proclaimed him to be the ‘High Warlock’, this time in English, now the words are faded. No longer true for him. Ahli Sihir has faded, too. He is no longer a warlock; he is no longer High Warlock. He is just Magnus: broken, betrayed, and suicidal.

He breathes in a tired sigh and watches as the symbol that represents him begins to morph before his very eyes. Beginning to form a crown of flower petals and leaves: striped carnations, deadly nightshade, asphodel, cyclamen, hemlock, and cypris. He huffs when the symbol finally finishes changing. He’d learnt the language of flowers for Alyssia and her calla lily.

He wonders if there is any point in continuing on, when his soul is letting him know that it is tired. That it is broken, sad, and overwrought. He wonders when Alec will see the hemlock and if he’ll have any idea what it means. Magnus wonders if there’s any point to life at all, especially when his own soul is telling him that it's done.

He looks down at his arm when it burns again, and watches as a word forms in Spanish, that he knows is for Alec, and it makes his blood boil.

_Desconsolado._

Alec doesn't get to be heartbroken after wrenching his heart out of his chest! Alec doesn't get to go off and play the victim when it is _Magnus_ who has lost _everything. _He knows the words are for Alec, because the words have _never _formed on his skin for _him. _For the briefest span of time _'I'll give him something to be heartbroken about!'_ screams through his mind, before he shoves it down._  
_

He looks down at the marks on his body, until he finds the word scrawled over his shoulder in Enochian. Survivor. It had formed when Camille had saved him. He sucks in a breath when he notes the way the word is flickering, the way his words sometimes do when he's on the verge of rendering them untrue.

He looks down into the water below him and he lets out a shaking breath.

"If I sink, I'll start again. If I float... I'll start again." he whispers, looking one more time at his numerous soulmarks, before he closes his eyes and surrenders himself to gravity.

**Author's Note:**

> Word list:  
Ahli Sihir: Warlock  
Calla Lily: Innocence and Purity  
Bedraget: Betrayed  
בּוֹגֵד: Betrayer/traitor  
Lebensmüde: Suicidal  
Striped carnations: Rejection and refusal  
Deadly nightshade: Deception, danger, and death  
Asphodel: My regrets follow you to the grave and memorial sorrow  
Cyclamen: Resignation and goodbye  
Hemlock: You will cause my death  
Cypris: Death, despair, and mourning  
Desconsolado: Heartbroken
> 
> I'm still figuring out how I want to end this, and by that I mean 'happy ending' or 'sad ending'. 
> 
> The Crowned Star was Regulus Black


End file.
